• "Contra to the prevailing belief, 'success' isn’t being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies."
  • "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."
  • "In this lifetime, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody except yourself."
  • “You do not want to win an argument. You want to win.”
  • "Luck is the residue of design."
  • "Success is the enemy of learning. It can deprive you of the time and the incentive to start over. Beginner's mind also needs beginner's time."
  • "Great questions are a much better indicator of future success than great answers."
  • “Oakeshott’s god was the fully realized individual.”
  • "The success formula: solve your own problems and freely share the solutions."
  • "To get what you want, deserve what you want."
  • "It is not about the journey. It absolutely is about the destination."
  • "Be so good they can't ignore you."
  • "Once you reach a decent level of professional success, lack of opportunity won’t kill you. It’s drowning in 'kinda cool' commitments that will sink the ship."
  • "In expert tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are won; in amateur tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are lost. In other words, professional tennis is a Winner’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the winner – and amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the loser. The two games are, in their fundamental characteristic, not at all the same. They are opposites."
  • “If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: never lie to yourself.”
  • "It isn't that we were so good at doing things that were difficult. We were good at avoiding things that were difficult."
  • "Pain plus reflection equals progress."
  • "You don't notice your progress in life because you are always raising the bar."
  • "The lesson for man is that personal happiness has very little to do with all this. It is possible to be unhappy and very adaptive."
  • "The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work."
  • "The reason startup founders can safely be nice is that making great things is compounded, and rapacity isn't."
  • "Great work usually seems to happen because someone sees something and thinks, I could do better than that."
  • "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle."
  • "Extraordinary results come from ordinary people with uncommon discipline."
  • "Fewer desires, but fully filled."
  • "This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed."
  • "The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life."
  • "You’re doing sales because you failed at marketing. You’re doing marketing because you failed at product."
  • "May you attract someone who speaks your language so you don’t have to spend a lifetime translating your soul."
  • "Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?"
  • "The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results good and bad as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism."
  • "Most 'successful' people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity."
  • "Trying and struggling looks like incompetence right up until the moment it looks like success."
  • “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.”